Wow! 100 days to go until The Tower will be up at the V&A!! We’re in St.James today and who else could have been number 100 – David Gill Galleries of course – not only a beautiful space but the gallery I have been with for 11 years now.

Without their help this whole project wouldn’t be happening – so thank you. By the way you can see my ‘Avarice’ Mirror in the window if you look carefully!

With 100 days to go I went to see 1882ltd yesterday to check production – they are pulling out all the stops and the pieces look phenomenal.

Barnaby Barford is an artist who works primarily with ceramics to create narrative pieces. He is best known for his work with both mass-market and antique found porcelain figurines, cutting up and exchanging elements or adding to them and repainting them, to create sculptures which are often sinister and sardonic but invariably humorous. With irony, he draws a portrait of our contemporary lives.

Through his works, Barford explores all aspects of our society. Following in the tradition of Hogarth, Chaucer, Dickens and Shakespeare; with a dark sense of English humour and satire, Barford’s work explores and celebrates the human condition. Over the last few years his practice has developed and his last exhibition ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’ saw him breaking new ground making large scale ceramic sculpture exploring sin in our contemporary world and its association with the breakdown in community.

Barnaby Barford (b. 1977) graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2002. He has shown his work internationally. He has been the subject of several solo exhibitions in the UK and most recently has had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia, USA. His work is part of both public and private collections. He is currently represented by David Gill Galleries, St James’ London. Barford has worked with museum commissions, private commissions and most recently for Louis Vuitton.

Alun Graves, Senior Curator of the Ceramics and Glass Collection at the V&A says, “Barford is brilliantly puckish, and something of an agent provocateur. By seduction and guile, his work exposes our inner frailties, prejudices and desires, holding up a mirror to us both metaphorically as well – on occasion – physically. Few are so incisive and insightful.”

Barnaby Barford: The Tower of Babel

A major sculptural installation created for the V&A by artist Barnaby Barford, The Tower of Babel tells an array of stories about our capital city, our society and economy, and ourselves as consumers. Standing an imposing six metres high, the Tower comprises 3000 bone china shops, each one unique, each depicting a real London shop photographed by the artist. At its base the shops are derelict, while at its pinnacle are the crème-de-la-crème of London’s exclusive boutiques and galleries.

Standing as a monument to the great British pastime of shopping, Barford’s apparently precarious Tower playfully likens our efforts to find fulfilment through retail with the biblical Tower of Babel’s attempt to reach heaven. Explicitly blurring the boundaries of art and commerce, each shop in the Tower will be for sale during its exhibition. With more prestigious but less affordable properties higher in the Tower, Barford confronts us with the choices we ourselves make as consumers, through necessity or desire.

This blog explores The Tower of Babel through its development, creation, exhibition, and sale, processes which will involve the artist cycling over 1000 miles to photograph shop facades from each of London’s postcodes, and the manufacture of 3000 bone china shops in Stoke-on-Trent.